Alan Halewood: Carn Dearg Meadhonach

Sunday, 14 February 2016

Carn Dearg Meadhonach

Day two of the Trainee workshop for The Association of Mountaineering Instructors and we were basing the day around mountaineering. There is no legal requirement for anyone to hold a qualification to teach climbing/mountaineering in the UK but Iain and Sam who I was out with today have chosen to take their experience and have it benchmarked against a nationally recognised standard. This means that people looking to go on the hill with them will know that they hold a qualification and have been assessed by a number of experienced people who have held the award for some time and gone through a moderation process to make that judgement. As a friend likes to say "I did the qualifications because I feel the people I take out deserve it. AMI supports Trainees by arranging opportunities for them to attend workshops to help them prepare for Assessment and that's what we have been up to this weekend.
We took the gondola up to Nevis Range and dropped into the Allt Daim. Following the glen south we began to pick our way up the hill onto the East Ridge of Carn Dearg Meadhonach looking at the snow pack (great Blog here from Mike on what's happening at present) and who we can teach the Be Avalanche Aware process to students and the limitations of pits (which we don't really use for decision making at all). We also talked about how we could manage novices on steep terrain through a variety of techniques culminating in the much misunderstood art of short roping.
The ridge was fun, the views and the wind came and went. We dropped back off Carn Beag Dearg still taking care to avoid patches of visually obvious slab before recrossing the Allt Damh to get the gondola down.
Forgot the camera today so its fuzzy iPhone pics. I didn't hang around to photo the Edinburgh Uni student preparing to bare all to a biting wind for a naked calendar- serious risk of frost nip!!